He explains a few of the environmental threats over the past few decades that have been greatly exaggerated, and the ultimate expense of Obama’s plan to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, which could cost the U.S. up to $1 trillion in lost GDP (according to Energy Information Administration data analyzed by Heritage Foundation statistician Kevin Dayaratna).

Ridley emphasises that the remedies to solve these environmental issues, sometimes prove worse than the disease. For example, widespread opposition to fracking for shale gas, has delayed the growth of onshore gas production in the U.S. and Europe, and has hurt the environment.

“In short, the environmental movement has repeatedly denied people access to safer technologies and forced them to rely on dirtier, riskier or more harmful ones. It is adept at exploiting people’s suspicion of anything new. To argue that the increasingly small risk of dangerous climate change many decades hence is something they should be more worried about is positively obscene.”